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She stood before him, pillar-like, her two hands clenched against her sides. Her lips were quite livid. They moved soundlessly for several seconds before she spoke. "I was waiting for the express." Her voice was flat and emotionless. It sounded almost as if she were talking in her sleep. And strangely it was that that shocked Scott even more than her appearance.

A casual remark, as I observed the industry of insects about the flowers, that the bean-tree was good for bees, elicited the scornful response, "Good for man!" The tree is of graceful shape, the bole often pillar-like in its symmetry, and the wood hard and durable and of pleasing colour, and so beautifully grained that it is fast becoming popular for furniture and cabinet-making.

But the next minute the exploring desire was strong upon him, and he plunged in amongst the bronze, pillar-like stems of the fir-trees, and began wandering on and on in a kind of twilight, flecked and cut by vivid rays of sunshine, which came through the dense, dark-green canopy overhead.

Innocently and wearily I passed round a pillar-like corner of wall, to come face to face with an old lioness and cubs. I heard the mother snarl, and at the same time her ears went back flat, and she crouched. The same fire of yellow eyes, the same grim snarling expression so familiar in my mind since Old Tom had leaped at me, faced me here.

Duffel again took the precaution to cast wary looks about him, in all directions; then parting the bushes at its opening, he entered the secret passage under the rock and groped his way along. About midway, he came to a pillar-like rock, which entirely blocked up the path. Turning sharply to the left, he felt his way a short distance, and came to an aperture in the wall-like stone.

A narrow tongue of dry land scarcely three inches above the swamp level was the trail they followed. All around tall cypress trees, strangely buttressed at the base, rose pillar-like into obscurity as though supporting the canopy of dusk. The goblin howling of the big cat-owl pulsated through the silence; strange gleams and flashes stirred the surface of the bog.

The sun was approaching the horizon when I left the river-bed, and entered the forest. Sunk below the tree-tops, and sending his rays between their pillar-like boles, he revealed a world of blessed shadows waiting to receive me. I had expected a pine-wood, but here were trees of many sorts, some with strong resemblances to trees I knew, others with marvellous differences from any I had ever seen.

He was interrupted by one of his feet which flew out and crashed into the man in front of and below. It is not well to quarrel upon a slippery incline, when the unknown is below. The fat man, having lost the support of one pillar-like foot, lurched forward. His body smote the next man, who hurtled into the next man. Then they all fell upon the cursing little man.

There was a soft haze in the air, and the sun's beams only painted, as it were, the capitals of the tall pillar-like pines, while the road was canopied and shaded by the skeins of grey moss that hung thickly on all the boughs. The trees grew thinner as the road approached the town.

Still Tom followed the direction, with the scaly, pillar-like trunks looking golden-red in the horizontal rays of the sun, which cast their long shadows in wonderful array, till it seemed to the boy at last as if he were walking through a quivering golden mist barred with great strokes of purply black. "I shan't get there before it begins to be dark," he thought, "for this can't last.